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<h1><a href="https://archiveofourown.org/works/27534136">A Biased Data Point</a> by <a class='authorlink' href='https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiri_bronach/pseuds/kiri_bronach'>kiri_bronach</a></h1>

<table class="full">

<tr><td><b>Category:</b></td><td>The Umbrella Academy (TV)</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Genre:</b></td><td>Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Angst, Character Study, Emotional Hurt, Emotional/Psychological Abuse, F/M, Gen, Hurt No Comfort, Introspection, Lila Pitts Needs A Hug, Lila comes to 2019 and the timeline's normal I guess, Lila/Diego is only background, Mild Hurt/Comfort, Past Child Abuse, Post-Traumatic Stress Disorder - PTSD, The Handler's A+ Parenting</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Language:</b></td><td>English</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Status:</b></td><td>Completed</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Published:</b></td><td>2020-11-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Updated:</b></td><td>2020-11-13</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Packaged:</b></td><td>2021-05-08 07:03:11</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Rating:</b></td><td>Teen And Up Audiences</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Warnings:</b></td><td>No Archive Warnings Apply</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Chapters:</b></td><td>1</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Words:</b></td><td>1,181</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Publisher:</b></td><td>archiveofourown.org</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Story URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/works/27534136</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Author URL:</b></td><td>https://archiveofourown.org/users/kiri_bronach/pseuds/kiri_bronach</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Summary:</b></td><td><div class="userstuff">
              <p>There's a special kind of loneliness in being an only child.</p>
            </div></td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Relationships:</b></td><td>Diego Hargreeves/Lila Pitts, Lila Pitts &amp; The Hargreeves</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Comments:</b></td><td>9</td></tr>

<tr><td><b>Kudos:</b></td><td>35</td></tr>

</table>

<a name="section0001"><h2>A Biased Data Point</h2></a>
<div class="story"><div class="userstuff module">
    
    <p>
  <span>“I’m a lone wolf,” Diego had said to her once.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>"I’m somewhat of a lone wolf myself,” she had responded, thinking she understood.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But the more time she spends with his family, the more she sees that she didn't understand. Whatever he had meant when he called himself a lone wolf, it isn’t quite the same.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diego fits in with his siblings. Not seamlessly, they fight too much for that, but in a way that Lila can’t hope to replicate. There’s an ease to their relationships, a subtlety to their communication. She can see that they belong together, even when they don’t get along. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>But Lila does not belong. Five mocks Diego yet glares at Lila when she tries to join in, and Lila learns that being friends with a set of siblings does not mean acting like she’s part of the group. There is a line between friend and sibling, and Lila, having never had either, doesn’t know where it is. She has never belonged anywhere but with her mother. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe that was the point. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Maybe she has never belonged </span>
  <em>
    <span>anywhere.</span>
  </em>
</p>
<p>
  
</p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>Lila watches the Hargreeves siblings, and she yearns, but she doesn’t know what for.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It isn’t for the companionship. The siblings are a lot to be around. Chaotic. Stupid. Loud. Even louder when Vanya’s power seeps into her own. She can’t imagine how they went on missions together. How did they ever get anything done with so many conflicting voices, with responsibilities that needed to be split? (How did she ever get anything done with no one there to watch her back when missions almost went wrong?) Lila has always been alone, but she’s never considered herself a lonely person. She thinks she would have gone crazy, having to deal with other people her whole life, not a moment of quiet to be found.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>It’s not for the siblings themselves. Her relationships with all of them, excepting Diego, are shaky at best. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Allison is polite to her, kind, even, but not friendly. After Diego she puts in the most effort to make Lila feel included but keeps her at arm’s length once she’s there. Somehow, Lila gets the impression that she shouldn't take it personally. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn’t think she’ll ever be able to forgive Five for what he did, least of all because he doesn’t seem to </span>
  <em>
    <span>want </span>
  </em>
  <span>her forgiveness. But she’s starting to accept that he hadn’t wanted to do it, that her mother had forced him to (and wasn’t that a whole ‘nother can of worms - that her mother might have had victims in the abuse sense as well as in the murder one). </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>The Hargreeves are rough and sharp and vicious. Yet there is something in Klaus’s soulful eyes, in Vanya’s quiet apologies, in Luther’s honesty that is none of these things. None of the siblings are soft, but these three are close to it in a way that sets Lila on edge and makes her think of her mother’s lectures on weakness. She wonders if, in another life, had she been their sister and not this awkward stranger who is kind of sort of their brother’s girlfriend, this feeling might have been protectiveness instead of deep discomfort. She wonders why it is the memory of her mother’s voice that opens up this line of thinking (she thinks she knows the answer).</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>When Diego confesses that his father used to hit him and his siblings, Lila’s heart breaks.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Good god, no wonder you’re all so messed up,” she says and pulls Diego close, hoping he’ll see the genuine sympathy behind the jab. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She does not understand this, either, the trauma of a parent who hurt her physically. Her mother never laid a hand on her except to comfort (not that she’d been particularly good at that, or done it often, or kept it up past the point when she’d decided Lila should have outgrown the want for affection). She can’t quite imagine what Diego’s feeling, only that he clearly needs the hug she offers (the comfort that she only barely knows how to give because she only had so much of an example).</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>She doesn't try to think of what it would have been like if her mother hit her. That pain would have made her feelings easier to disentangle doesn’t even cross her mind. There's nothing to disentangle. Her mother loved her. Diego’s father didn’t love him. It was that simple</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Except that it wasn’t. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Diego invites her to the gym with him and Allison and Luther. And when Allison makes a comment about how “working out is so much more fun when you aren’t being forced to do it”, Lila agrees. She doesn’t think about it, just agrees because it’s true and relating to people is how you get to know them. But the others react as if she’s said something concerning. Somewhere between Lila insisting that it’s no big deal and Luther trying to give her some speech about how “that’s called denial”, the four of them end up comparing memories of their childhood training.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Their stories are eerily similar to hers. </span>
  <em>
    <span>That can’t be right,</span>
  </em>
  <span> she thinks, and she looks for all the little differences. She looks for the places where their schedule had been stricter, where her injuries had been better cared for, where their shortcomings had brought more anger. (She finds them, but she also finds the opposites.) From what she knows about Reginald Hargreeves, it makes sense that he would mistreat his children like that. From what she knows (what she thinks she knows) about her mother, it does not make sense that she'd been mistreated. She looks for the places where she might be misremembering or exaggerating. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>That pain would have made her feelings easier to disentangle still doesn’t cross her mind. Because the stories line up. Because there </span>
  <em>
    <span>was</span>
  </em>
  <span> pain and that doesn't make anything any simpler.</span>
</p>
<p> </p>
<p> </p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, remember when…” Allison says to Five, and Five remembers.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I remember,” Klaus says to Vanya, and Vanya sighs with relief.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wasn’t that fucked up?” Luther says to Diego, and Diego agrees.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>And Lila realizes what she’s been yearning for. Understanding. Confirmation. A second voice.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Hey, remember when…” Lila says to the mirror, and her reflection has half forgotten.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Yeah, I remember,” Lila says to the mirror, and her reflection argues that she only remembers her own point of view.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>“Wasn’t that fucked up?” Lila says to the mirror, and her reflection doubts.</span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lila does not yearn for a hypothetical person she knows she would get sick of. Nor does she yearn for a real one she can barely stand. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Lila yearns for an unbiased opinion. She yearns for someone who can look at her memories and see more than what she wants them to. For someone who, when she doesn’t know what to say, can fill in the blanks with more than just assumptions. For someone who can balance her uncertainty with proof. </span>
</p>
<p>
  <span>Somewhere along the way, Lila lost credibility in her own mind, and she yearns for someone she can trust the way she doesn’t trust herself.   </span>
</p>
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